Thursday, February 6, 2014

Two kinds of civilization

GUEST: Maria Luisa Rosal, new Field Organizer for the SOA Watch who has recently returned from Close the School of the Americas rally in Fort Benning, Georgia, talks about the dangers of US military training being given to Latin American army personnel.

Maria was an excellent guest and explained the workings of the SOA Watch very well. Why is the school still funded? She thought that people in the US just didn't know the damage to human rights that the School of the Americas perpetuates in Latin America.But don't our leaders know? Isn't the list of human rights abusers, who have been the SOA's graduates for decades, well known to those in our government who fund the school year after year?Perhaps the answer is that US military training of foreign troops is about colonialism. Once the US has a Third World's military on its payroll, why worry about a populist coming to power and disrupting the colonial exploitation? The military can do what needs to be done, organizing death squads to keep popular resistance at bay, and then overthrowing democratically elected governments if that is what must be done to protect US business interests. Maybe colonialism is an extension of slavery, the robbing of the developing world, first of their labor, and then of their natural resources. All this, of course, can't be discussed in our country since part of our religion is the benevolence of US foreign policy. Against all evidence of history, we cling to our moral righteousness.

Is it perhaps, possible that there are two kinds of Civilization-one for home consumption and one for the heathen market? -Mark Twain

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